Sunday 20 December 2015
Friday 11 September 2015
New Writing Templates
So its nearly the end of term and my idea to make templates has been an interesting exercise. I am lucky to work in a team where we all share our work. Because of this I realised there were already some great Reading templates made up, so I went in and fine tuned them for the learners in my class. So I decided to think about designing some writing templates, to make it easier for my learners to have a plan.
I have always been big on making a plan for writing and up until now the students have done this on a piece of paper. This has not always been successful. My students love working on their i-pads so I wanted to generate an exciting new plan with cool visuals to inspire them to write amazing stories.
I started with a narrative plan as my learners have always liked creating their own stories around fantasy and make-believe. The first attempt worked well but I knew I could make the plans better.
I knew I would need to generate 2 plans as I have 2 writing groups within my class. One plan would need a more formal structure and one would need voice instructions and a simple format to get them started.
Next we had a class discussion on what we would like to write about. The girls and boys had different opinions....of course. So we decided on the setting. Castles. That way the boys could write about knights and dragons and the girls could write about princesses and witches etc.
The first slide of their plan was to draw their character or characters. I placed some visuals around the outside of the slide to give them some inspiration.
After drawing their character they had to write some key words describing their character.
As a class we all googled castles and each student was allowed to chose the castle of their choice and insert this image into their slide.
They then had to write some key words describing their castle.
Once again I inserted some images around the outside of their plan to give them some ideas. These images were deleted once their own image was uploaded.
All good narratives have a problem or event that occurs. The students then had to sit down and come up with such an event and how they were going to solve this. This was probably the trickiest part and needed lots of scaffolding. I encouraged them to keep it simple and in the context of their setting.
This slide was to guide them through the process of writing a narrative. We wrote a story together first and I modelled what I wanted from them.
Many of my students even my top writers start each sentence with 'and then' so I wanted to provide them some different sentence starters. They did not have to use these but I found that most did.
So did it work? I can say with a huge smile on my face that I was over joyed with the results. Spending time going through the process of writing a narrative and giving the students some freedom to create their own character, and chose their own setting got them excited to tell a story. I noticed a real change in their attitude to writing. For once there was an eerie silence that fell over my class when it came to writing their stories into their writing books. Below is a story from one of my top writers in the class.
The next step was to create a writing plan with voice instructions for my students who do struggle with writing. They all have fabulous ideas but getting them down on paper is a struggle.
The first and second slide were just the same for 'character' and 'setting' but using garage band I inserted a voice over explaining what they had to do. The third slide was to come up with one event.
The voice instructions for this slide tell the students to think of something exciting that could happen to their character. Once again this was where I was needed to help them get their thoughts down. I encouraged them to go away and record what they wanted to happen and then we sat and wrote it down as simply as possible.
This is the simple writing plan for my second group. Their goal was to write 3 great sentences using the gifted words we had written down together. Each voice instruction tells them what is required in each sentence.
Once again I was blown away with the results. Garageband has been my life saver. Having the ability to record my instructions has given my students who struggle to work independently, the freedom to know exactly what they should be doing. Each student in my class has a set of head phones so there is no problem with hearing my voice booming over the classroom. These students are generally the ones who need my constant supervision to stay on task. Once again I could hear a pin drop when it came to writing their stories. Below is a piece of writing from a student who has struggled with writing all year.
While I was watching this boy write I could see how confident he was. He knew what he had to do. I saw him flicking through his slides and listening intently to the voice instructions. This boy usually takes a week to write 2-3 sentences but he wrote this in an hour. Once he had written up his story and I had checked spelling etc, he was free to blog his story and I have never seen him look so proud of his work.
Of course there are still things I could do better and I will continue to tweak my templates so they work even better for my learners. The idea is to scaffold less and less with each group. We will continue to have fun with narratives until the end of term and then I am going to concentrate on writing Recounts in term 4. So my next goal is to create a recount template over the holidays.
I have always been big on making a plan for writing and up until now the students have done this on a piece of paper. This has not always been successful. My students love working on their i-pads so I wanted to generate an exciting new plan with cool visuals to inspire them to write amazing stories.
I started with a narrative plan as my learners have always liked creating their own stories around fantasy and make-believe. The first attempt worked well but I knew I could make the plans better.
I knew I would need to generate 2 plans as I have 2 writing groups within my class. One plan would need a more formal structure and one would need voice instructions and a simple format to get them started.
Next we had a class discussion on what we would like to write about. The girls and boys had different opinions....of course. So we decided on the setting. Castles. That way the boys could write about knights and dragons and the girls could write about princesses and witches etc.
The first slide of their plan was to draw their character or characters. I placed some visuals around the outside of the slide to give them some inspiration.
After drawing their character they had to write some key words describing their character.
As a class we all googled castles and each student was allowed to chose the castle of their choice and insert this image into their slide.
They then had to write some key words describing their castle.
Once again I inserted some images around the outside of their plan to give them some ideas. These images were deleted once their own image was uploaded.
All good narratives have a problem or event that occurs. The students then had to sit down and come up with such an event and how they were going to solve this. This was probably the trickiest part and needed lots of scaffolding. I encouraged them to keep it simple and in the context of their setting.
This slide was to guide them through the process of writing a narrative. We wrote a story together first and I modelled what I wanted from them.
Many of my students even my top writers start each sentence with 'and then' so I wanted to provide them some different sentence starters. They did not have to use these but I found that most did.
So did it work? I can say with a huge smile on my face that I was over joyed with the results. Spending time going through the process of writing a narrative and giving the students some freedom to create their own character, and chose their own setting got them excited to tell a story. I noticed a real change in their attitude to writing. For once there was an eerie silence that fell over my class when it came to writing their stories into their writing books. Below is a story from one of my top writers in the class.
The first and second slide were just the same for 'character' and 'setting' but using garage band I inserted a voice over explaining what they had to do. The third slide was to come up with one event.
The voice instructions for this slide tell the students to think of something exciting that could happen to their character. Once again this was where I was needed to help them get their thoughts down. I encouraged them to go away and record what they wanted to happen and then we sat and wrote it down as simply as possible.
This is the simple writing plan for my second group. Their goal was to write 3 great sentences using the gifted words we had written down together. Each voice instruction tells them what is required in each sentence.
Once again I was blown away with the results. Garageband has been my life saver. Having the ability to record my instructions has given my students who struggle to work independently, the freedom to know exactly what they should be doing. Each student in my class has a set of head phones so there is no problem with hearing my voice booming over the classroom. These students are generally the ones who need my constant supervision to stay on task. Once again I could hear a pin drop when it came to writing their stories. Below is a piece of writing from a student who has struggled with writing all year.
Of course there are still things I could do better and I will continue to tweak my templates so they work even better for my learners. The idea is to scaffold less and less with each group. We will continue to have fun with narratives until the end of term and then I am going to concentrate on writing Recounts in term 4. So my next goal is to create a recount template over the holidays.
Sunday 9 August 2015
Term 3 Plan
Term 3 is upon us and the learners I was targeting last term have responded well to my Explain Everything (EE) activities. By recording the instructions, I made the students independent learners and this helped everybody in class get on with their work and not interrupt each other.
This term I am going to focus on creating some EE templates that can be used for any book at varying levels. Although I have got quicker at making EE's it is still time consuming and I need to work smarter not harder.
At Point England School we work to a model of Learn-Create-Share so it's important for my students to get creative and make their own EE's. This has been successful in Math lessons and writing lessons and now through creating basic templates I hope to get the students input in creating our own EE reading activities.
I created a very simple book review template for my students who are reading above the standard.
Slide 1 - students have to take a photo of the cover of the book and insert it into slide.
Slide 2 - students have to write down the name of the Author and the Title of the book.
Slide 3 - students have to tell me about the story adding as much detail as they can.
Slide 4 - students write the main characters down and briefly tell me about each one.
Slide 5 - students tell me why they like/dislike the story. They can do this using the record button.
This has worked ok but I need to fine tune it. I also need to create templates for my learners who are reading below the standard. I will have to put in voice instructions for them but I hope to make it general enough that we can put the template to any book.
This term I am going to focus on creating some EE templates that can be used for any book at varying levels. Although I have got quicker at making EE's it is still time consuming and I need to work smarter not harder.
At Point England School we work to a model of Learn-Create-Share so it's important for my students to get creative and make their own EE's. This has been successful in Math lessons and writing lessons and now through creating basic templates I hope to get the students input in creating our own EE reading activities.
I created a very simple book review template for my students who are reading above the standard.
Slide 1 - students have to take a photo of the cover of the book and insert it into slide.
Slide 2 - students have to write down the name of the Author and the Title of the book.
Slide 3 - students have to tell me about the story adding as much detail as they can.
Slide 4 - students write the main characters down and briefly tell me about each one.
Slide 5 - students tell me why they like/dislike the story. They can do this using the record button.
This has worked ok but I need to fine tune it. I also need to create templates for my learners who are reading below the standard. I will have to put in voice instructions for them but I hope to make it general enough that we can put the template to any book.
Saturday 2 May 2015
Creating New Activities
My next step was to create high cognitive activities that was going to engage my lower level learners. I began with a reading group. These students are reading at Level 3 so they are well below the National Standard for Year 2.
I first sat down and discussed with this group what sort of activities they enjoyed doing on Explain Everything. Everyone of them said they enjoyed recording themselves. So I set about photographing each page of a book. I then typed up the text for each page and scrambled the words and punctuation around. I wanted them to form a complete sentence and then record themselves reading the sentence.
Next I created some pages for work on some of the high frequency words to consolidate their learning and I finished the activity with a picture.
Problem: They could not read my instructions, even though I had typed the instructions in the simplest of language. So I went back in and I recorded all instructions using garage band and inserted them into Explain Everything.
This worked well. The students really enjoyed the activity and the best thing of all I was not interrupted when I was reading with another group because they could follow my verbal instructions. It does take time to create these activities but I know I will get quicker as I continue.
I first sat down and discussed with this group what sort of activities they enjoyed doing on Explain Everything. Everyone of them said they enjoyed recording themselves. So I set about photographing each page of a book. I then typed up the text for each page and scrambled the words and punctuation around. I wanted them to form a complete sentence and then record themselves reading the sentence.
Next I created some pages for work on some of the high frequency words to consolidate their learning and I finished the activity with a picture.
Problem: They could not read my instructions, even though I had typed the instructions in the simplest of language. So I went back in and I recorded all instructions using garage band and inserted them into Explain Everything.
This worked well. The students really enjoyed the activity and the best thing of all I was not interrupted when I was reading with another group because they could follow my verbal instructions. It does take time to create these activities but I know I will get quicker as I continue.
Sunday 1 March 2015
Focus for Inquiry has changed!
After thinking long and hard about my inquiry and looking at the make-up of my class I have decided to change the focus for my inquiry to the students who need more support in class. These students can sometimes struggle to stay on task and stay focussed on any given activity. So my goal for them is to create high cognitive engagement activities that they can tackle on their own and help them become more independent learners.
I will have to look at wording these activities clearly in language they understand or providing them with appropriate images that will allow them to work through the process, communicating with each other to problem solve and encouraging them to work in small groups sharing their ideas and helping each other through the given activity.
By scaffolding these groups correctly each individual will have the chance to shine and use their own strengths to help the group.
I will have to look at wording these activities clearly in language they understand or providing them with appropriate images that will allow them to work through the process, communicating with each other to problem solve and encouraging them to work in small groups sharing their ideas and helping each other through the given activity.
By scaffolding these groups correctly each individual will have the chance to shine and use their own strengths to help the group.
Saturday 21 February 2015
Inquiry for 2015
This is an exciting year for me as a teacher. I will be running a 1:1 i-pad class for year 2 and we are working on Explain Everything for the majority of our lessons. My question asks, "how would you begin to get higher order thought out of learners who are well above the National Standard in Reading".
I want to go beyond the menial tasks of word families, basic comprehension, spelling etc. These students need to stretch themselves into the realm of connecting and comparing the information and ideas from the text to their own experience to form an opinion. I want to allow for them to predict using evidence in the text to support their predictions, or make an inference when there is none. When analysing I want to help them identify and explain the writers purpose using evidence from the text. Finally they need to be able to apply self monitoring where they can use a variety of strategies when they lose meaning such as: rereading, reading on, or slowing down their reading pace, searching for clues in the text, making a prediction, making connections to what they know, imagining what they are reading, asking themselves questions to clarify their understanding. So......interesting times ahead. I will be creating many different lessons on Explain Everything of varying formats and conducting interviews with students to get feed back on what they find interesting and challenging and maybe even boring! I will be posting my findings as my research unfolds so stay tuned.....
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